Chapter 5: Two Mothers
Skinner suggests he would talk to Mulder’s wife alone. He has never been more scared by a look than the look Scully gives him at that suggestion. Skinner quickly adds “of course we can talk to her together.” The hospital arranges a private meeting room. As they walk to the meeting room, Scully tries to remember how Mulder described his wife to her
“You two are alike in that you are both intelligent, analytical, career women. Felicity was an attorney. She was usually really laid back and mellow. It's none of my business if you don’t make it my business, she would say, but if you got her angry she could be every bit as ferocious as you can be, but I knew she was really mad when her voice got calm and controlled. I guess I like my women strong, Scully.”
Scully pauses as they get to the door of the meeting room. Skinner pauses as well to give her a moment to collect her thoughts. Scully reflects. The first time she tried to seduce Mulder, he had declined. She was so mortified. The next day he came to her apartment. She tried to dismiss it, said she was drunk, but he said, “Scully , you know I want to, but we’re partners.” “You were partners with Diana. Is it her? Can’t you move on?” “Scully, you are always so hung up about Phoebe and Diana. Do you think they are the only women I have ever loved?” “Mulder, I’m not asking for a list of your sexual conquests. I’m asking why we can’t have a relationship?” “Scully, I was married, or I am married, I don’t know actually if I’m still legally married or not. She’s the reason…”
Scully looks at Skinner and nods. She’s ready. They enter the room. Felicity’s back is towards them. Her hair is long, past her waist, thick and multi-colored red, black purple, green, orange in long streaks. Her hair is startling and surrounds her like a shield. They walk further into the room and she turns to them. As remarkable as her hair was, her face was the ordinary face of a middle aged woman. She is holding in her hands a photograph and Scully sees with a glance that it is one Mulder also has. In the photo, Felicity is in white and Mulder in a blue tux and behind them is an Elvis impersonator.
“You’re the agents who work with Fox?”
Skinner introduces himself as Mulder’s boss and Scully as his long time partner. They sit at a conference table. Felicity has no way knowledge about Scully and Mulder’s romantic history or that Scully has her own son named William. “Agent Scully, I’ve been told you are, also, Fox’s physician.” Scully nods. “I’m so glad. I don’t have any of his medical knowledge to tell the doctors here. We’re separated. I haven’t seen him in a few years.”
“Decades,” Scully cannot contain her rage. “Decades ago you left him with just a note and then disappeared.”
“That’s correct.”
“Yet, you are here today still claiming the right to call yourself his wife.”
“When a spouse is missing, the remaining spouse can easily divorce the spouse through posting the legal notifications in major newspapers. Did Fox ever take the steps to legally divorce me?” Her voice is calm and controlled. Scully shakes her head. “Then, I am, as a legal point of fact, his wife.”
“You abandoned him.”
“I went into hiding because my son’s life was in danger. I don’t know if you are a mother, Agent Scully, but if you are, then you can understand. A mother will do anything to protect her son.”
Skinner touches Scully on the arm again with his right hand and holds his left up in front of him. “I never knew Mulder was married. Can we start from the beginning?”
Felicity tries to tell them in a precise way the details they needed to know, but with each statement she experiences the flashes of memory she had been having all day; memories strong and so vivid.
“We were high school sweethearts.” Friends forever, swear, swear! “We had made a childish pact that if we weren’t married to anyone else by October 5, 1989 we would marry each other. Of course, we dated other people in college.” Fox calling her from England- Phoebe had broken his heart. Her walking down an aisle in white and seeing Fox in the pews. She had invited him not expecting him to come. Their eyes met and she turned leaving her fiancée at the aisle. Fox and her talking about it later. It wasn’t Fox’s fault. He just isn’t the one. Fox asking if it was because the other offer on the table was better. His mischievous, smug grin!
“We saw each other in May 1989 over Memorial Day. He was home to visit. He told me he was beginning to explore these cases called the X-files. He was so excited and he was in love with a woman named Diana. I didn’t remind him about the deadline coming up because I thought he was telling me he had found someone. Then, October 5 there he was asking me if I was ready. Diana and him had asked to officially be assigned to the X files and he didn’t want to be partners and romantic.” He told Felicity besides he thought the other offer on the table was a better one…if the offer was still on the table. “So we flew to Vegas.” She looks at the picture in her hand.
“How long were you together?” Skinner cannot believe Mulder never mentioned this.
“Exactly a year. Diana and Fox had received permission to begin the X-files full time by November 1990- giving them a month’s notice in their other departments. We were going to have a big celebration dinner in honor of our anniversary and the X-files. I went to the doctor in the morning because I thought I had a bad flu bug, but I was pregnant. I was so happy knowing that Fox would be happy. We just moved into the first house we were buying because we had decided to start trying.”
“What happened?”
“As I was leaving the doctor’s two men grabbed me. They took me to see a man. He said he was an old friend’s of Bill Mulder. I sensed an evil intent. I asked him to put out the cigarette he was smoking because it was making me nauseous.” Scully and Skinner exchanged looks: the cigarette smoking man. “He said the work Fox was doing now with the X-files was critical and there were men who would stop at nothing to keep him from being distracted. He said they would kill my baby. I believed him. He told me he would help me change my identity and we could go underground. It was the only way to keep my baby safe. So I went home, packed up some belongings, wrote a note to Mulder and walked away from my life. “
Scully bangs her hand on the table. “You didn’t just write him a Dear John note. You were specifically cruel.” Scully remembers Mulder, again on the night he told her about his marriage, telling her that Scully was his everything. If they became romantic and he screwed it up and she left, they would lose the friendship. He was so afraid of that. It had happened to him before and Scully was his everything. He was so afraid of losing her.
Felicity is having a similar memory of a 17 old Fox begging her: friends forever, swear. “I had to make sure he didn’t look for me. Fox and I were friends first. if I was unhappy with our marriage, thought we made a mistake, I could have told him and we would have stayed friends. He would never buy that kind of letter. So I told him that during our year of marriage I had grown to hate him so much that not only did I want a divorce but I never wanted to see him again. As long as I was throwing away our wedding vows, I was also throwing away the promise I made to him in high school to be friends forever. I hated him.” Felicity gets up from the table. She is getting the impression Scully is more than Fox’s work partner. She doesn’t need anybody reminding her of how much she had hurt Fox. She has thought of it daily for 26 years. “I didn’t want him looking for me.”
“He did look for you -for months. Him and Diana both.” Scully remembers another night a few months after he had told her about his marriage; her promising Mulder that nothing would ever hurt their friendship, but they had a chance for something more. Please trust her even if all these other women had hurt him, please! Her taking his hand and taking him to bed.
“Diana knew exactly where I was.” Felicity spits Diana’s name out with contempt “She came to me in the hospital the day William was born. She wanted to make sure I didn’t change my mind and try to contact Fox. She said he had sold our house and moved into an apartment. The night…the night I left him…he was back in bed with her. She had pictures in case I didn’t believe.”
Scully remembers Mulder telling her. He was so afraid of being alone and Diana and him had a brief history before starting the X-Files. . He just escaped into her until she left him, too. “You named William after Mulder’s father?”
Felicity shakes her head. ‘It's Fox’s middle name. Soon as I heard I was pregnant I wanted a boy and for him to be a junior, but that was too dangerous so my son is William M Fox and my name became Moondance Fox. I wanted to keep whatever I could of Fox in our life.”
“Ladies, let's get to today. How did you find him today?” Skinner’s cell phone has not stopped beeping and buzzing. He needed facts about who had been behind Mulder’s abduction and then to turn his attention to other things.
“A man came to me. He told me that Fox had been abducted to save him from the memory loss. They told me where to find him, but that only my son could save him. They gave me the instructions Scully had given them on the treatment.”
A nurse interrupts: “Excuse me. Agent Mulder is awake and asking for Agent Scully. Also Mrs. Mulder, you can see your son now.”
“Agent Scully, I sense you and Fox are close. Please try to make him understand that everything I did was to protect our son. A mother will do anything for her son. Please ask him to forgive me.”
“I am close to Mulder. I call him Mulder. I think he will understand.”